Method for creating user configurable active storefronts and active personal profiles

ABSTRACT

Currently there is no product that allows an attractive graphical home or building—like virtual presence on the Internet to be created—that would allow all the typical interactions or information dissemination that one would like to have with individuals or businesses reflecting their actual presence in a geographical location. Having such a product allows virtual neighborhoods to be created both by geographical location or by interests or by nature of businesses or many other such classifications. Enabling active interaction with businesses through the graphical presence will be useful in both increasing the footfall for the businesses as well as reducing the cost of their backend operational expenses by automating the interactions with their customers.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

Profiles of individuals as well businesses on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and others have a major lacuna. They do not reflect a desirable home-like or business-like visual presence that makes an impressive visual statement about the business or individual. Making them transaction level active—capable of interaction with those who land on the profiles adds a considerable value to the profiles. This lead to an effective and interesting way to interact with people and businesses in one's neighborhood.

-   1) We would like an individual to create a graphic representation of     his/her profile that appears as an actual home built to the     individual's own taste tied to either his postal zone. We would like     a business like a restaurant to be able to create a graphic     representation of an actual restaurant to the restaurant built to     owner's taste tied to its actual address, postal zone, and the type     of cuisine it offers. This capability is extended to many other     types of business like physicians' offices, beauty parlors,     automobile service businesses, ethnic grocers etc.—all small to     medium businesses who would benefit from being able to interact     online with individuals in the geographical vicinity thereby     increasing their footfall and turnover as well as providing them     with analytical information about their clientele who would interact     through such a portal. These graphic representations would create a     virtual community that can be linked with mapping software for     customers to zoom into or zoom out of like they do with mapping     software to be able to gage direction and distances. This would     extend all over the world. -   2) Having created such graphic presence, one gets an opportunity to     create additional value to these graphic representations by making     these representations ACTIVE—that is, for individuals to interact     with other individuals and businesses in a meaning and value-added     manner. For example, the graphic representation of a restaurant will     have the capability of individuals landing on a restaurant to     actually see its menu, ask questions through a chat box as one would     with a waiter if one were physically seated in the restaurant,     choose items on the menu, with remarks as to how they want the item     to be done, quantities and whether the items are ordered for dine     in, take out, delivery or for shipping and payment for the entire     item can be made on-line through our portal yielding a percentage of     the order to the portal service provider. There would be additional     options for reviewing the food ordered. The review would be far more     in-depth in this case, since the review can even be on an item by     item basis should the reviewer choose to do so. The restaurant can     also publicize its special offers or coupons and automatically     direct it to all the individuals residing in specific geographical     areas to increase its footfall. This interaction scenario described     for restaurants can be extended to the other types of business     described. The graphic presence for doctors would enable the doctors     to indicate availability of consultation slots and for users to take     up their slots—for example. These examples indicate the huge value     added to both individuals as well as businesses. Those who are     travelling can temporarily change their address and be able to     interact with all the businesses in their new temporary geographical     location.

Individuals similarly could find other individuals in their geographical vicinity with similar interests by either by doing a search by interests and postal zone and then leaving a message in the mail box of individuals with whom there might be the possibility of mutual interest.

SUMMARY

A viable platform and methodology to create a graphic representation of a home or business.

Every building-like graphical presence will have architectural elements like windows, chimneys, columns, canopies, roofs, porticos etc. We can provide several selections of each of these architectural elements for the home owner or business owner to “construct” their graphic presence that is stylistically unique and to their taste.

This includes a methodology for making the graphic representation as interesting as possible to attract visitors to the site even before interacting. This includes several creative tools and ideas to make the presence as interesting as possible enabling every person and business to differentiate and render unique and interesting personality to their presence on the portal. This includes ability to add music or messages or video that landing individuals can listen to while they wait for personnel at the chat box or do so if they visit the presence after working hours or browse favorite movies or books or photographs or music if a friend lands on an individuals' presence. Videos and songs posted on social media sites are all scattered according to the date of posting. The portal will have the ability to consolidate all of them inside the graphic presence. Even a resume can be added to an individual's page that can be seen only by representatives of businesses for example. Personal interests like singing, instruments, games etc. can be captured at the time of registration and indicated in some way on the graphic building.

This describes several ways for landing individuals to interact with the owner of the presence—including chat box, mail box, wanted box, on offer box. This also included business specific tools like being able to enter menu items and their prices, being able to accept orders, enter instructions, calculate bills, tips, taxes, collect payments etc.

This describes analytical tools and backend reports that will be useful for both individuals and businesses to track earlier transactions and interactions and for businesses to be able to extract figures from sales via this portal to feed into their ERP.

This describes the ability to pin the portal presence created to one's social media profile in some manner so that the graphic presence becomes an enhancement to the profile page on all the major social media sites. Clicking on this image enables those landing on the social media profile to click on the pinned image or link and find their way into our portal thereby increasing the traffic.

Apps will be created for mobile devices so that the graphic representations will fit in neatly on all types of mobile devices on iOS, Android, and Windows platforms.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates how architectural elements are combined to create a graphic presence of an individual home or business.

FIG. 2 illustrates the finished graphic presence

FIG. 3 illustrates the system Interaction Dataflow

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The term “server”, when used here, is broadly understood to mean any computing entity or family of such entities capable of responding to user requests over a network. The computing entities may be computer servers or server farms, general purpose digital computers, personal digital assistants, special-purpose devices such as printers or scanners with digital processors built in, or specialized hardware devices such as XML chips or XML computers; either containing storage units or making use of storage units elsewhere on the network. The family of computing entities may be geographically distributed or may be “virtual” entities within a larger entity.

The term “video file,” when used here, is broadly understood to mean a digital representation of a video signal. It can be lossy or lossless, and can include any suitable format, including CCIR 601, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.261, H.263, H.264, any codec-based, MiniDV, Digital8, DVD, or other formats already existing or yet to be invented.

The term “audio file”, when used here, is broadly understood to mean any digital representation of an audio waveform. It can be lossy or lossless, and can include WAV, PCM, TTA, FLAC, AU, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Windows Media Audio, TTA, RIFF, AIFF, IFF, BWF, Advanced Audio Coding, FLV or other format already existing or yet to be invented.

The true gold standard for presence of an individual or a business on the Internet is a graphic representation of an individual's home reflecting the styles typical to the geographical area the individual lives in—an Adobe style home in Arizona or a Mediterranean style home in California for example and with the capability to fill it with several items of interest as one would with one's own business or home—like music or video that plays upon landing, a collection of favorite music, pictures, videos available for permitted landing visitors to view on demand all presented more elegantly than they are currently on social media sites.

Such graphic representations can be created by combining architectural elements as shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. What is shown is by using Radio Buttons since these are simplest for the lay user who may not be very technology savvy. Broadly, the selection can be done by any other means that such selection is done using a computer like drag and drop, drop down menu, checkboxes, lists etc.

If 5 selections are available for a single architectural element and there are 6 architectural elements then one will be able to get 6⁵ unique styles=7,776 unique styles, which a decent amount of choice.

Next step to creating a graphic presence is to fill the presence with items of interest. Just as would encounter piped music when one enters a business premises or when one enters the home of a friend, we will be able to create a playlist by uploading audio files from a computer or by pasting links from websites like YouTube, Soundcloud or Smule. We can also create a playlist of videos by uploading videos from one's computer or links from video websites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion etc. On the graphic presence of individuals, there will be the ability to upload photographs or videos or audio from one's computer or paste links for these for visitors to play on demand. These can also be pulled from Social Media sites with permission from the user. All these are arranged in an attractive way so that they can be easily accesses by permitted visitors. Even animated pets with realistic sounds can be added to add human interest to a home. If music is playing on the landing site, animated notes can be seen flying out of the graphic representation. Personal interests entered at the time if registration can be displayed appropriately on the graphic buildings of individuals.

Standard communication tools like chat boxes will be provided. In addition, there is a ‘What I Am Looking For’ box one can enter any personal need. Example: Babysitter on Saturday evenings to be with my 7-year-old son for 4 hours. Standard needs are immediately visible through an icon that is instantly recognizable to passing visitors. Similarly, there is a ‘What I Have To Offer’ box where one can offer a service or an item for sale or to give away free. Similar boxes are made available for businesses as well. In the case of businesses, the corresponding boxes are ‘What We Are Looking For’ and ‘What We Are Offering’. These could be positions to fill or discounts being offered.

Privacy options are provided for each element so that only permitted audience can see each of the features added. For example, there is no need for friends located in other cities to know that a person is looking for a babysitter. He can confine the visibility of this feature only to those who live in his/her postal zone or city.

Backend reporting tools enable interactions to be logged continuously. In the case of businesses, more sophisticated interaction tools like being able to send copies of chat interaction to the individual's registered email, to email receipts of financial transactions, for user to trace transactions one has had, to get annual summary of transactions of an individual automatically mailed to the individual upon request, for the business all the transactions are summarized in a standard form to feed into their ERP.

To virally market this concept there will have to be some tie up to existing profile pages on Facebook, Twitter etc. so that by clicking on an icon or link user's friends can fund away to the user's home to visit it. This will drive traffic to and interest in the portal.

Powerful search tools are developed to find homes businesses based on certain criteria. In addition. One can create a virtual community—example tennis players in the postal zone 95138 and browse these or Groceries selling Indian Groceries in Las Vegas.

The graphic buildings will be equally easy to view and interact with on desktop, lap tops and mobile devices, either through popular browsers or through Apps designed for iOS, Android or Window based device. The transport from building to building will be by means of a horizontal cursor or horizontal swipe in the case of touchscreen devices.

System Interactions

FIG. 3 depicts the flow chart of the person creating the graphic presence. The first step is registration. In addition to the usual registration, the city and postal zone of individuals and the complete postal address of businesses is captured. In the case of individuals, interests are captured as well. In the case of business registration, business license details are captured as well to ensure that the business is a bona fide business. This is cross checked against business database provided by the local government. The user then creates an appropriate representation of his home or business using the graphic tools provided. Commercial transactions are permitted only if the business license is successfully verified.

The user then adds the interest enhancement features described in [00031].

Then the user enters the ‘What I Am Looking For’ and ‘What I Have To Offer’ information if there is a need. In the case of businesses, the entries are made to ‘What We Are Looking For’ and ‘What We Are Offering’ boxes.

Then the user enters the business specific information like Menu in easy to upload PDF form. This is converted automatically or manually to a form that can be used by customers to fill while placing an order. The individual user enters credit card information either stored within his registration data or entered on the fly. The business enters both credit card as well payment collection details in the payment gateway provided.

The individual user as well as the business user upload the site enhancement tools as per their needs as described in [00031]

Both the individual as well as the business now link their graphic presence to their existing social media presence using the tools provided by our software. With this both the individual user as well as the businesses are ready to start accepting visitors. 

I claim:
 1. A process by which both individual users as well as businesses register themselves at a portal created for all the functions described below with all the information captured to be able to achieve all the functions below.
 2. A process for creating graphic web presence accessible though browsers for individuals using popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. in the form of enhancing their user profiles on the social media creating virtual homes by combining different graphical architectural elements like roof, canopy, windows, columns, doors, rain gutter, walk etc. of different designs in different ways to enable each user to create a unique design reflecting the user's preference.
 2. The process by which the presence thus created becomes a power User Interface for those who create the presence as well as for those who land at the enhanced user profiles enabling users to use their computers or mobile devices or tablets to interact actively with individuals who have created such a virtual presence.
 3. The process for individuals to create a similar graphical web presence for themselves independent of social media membership which will enable others to land at such a graphical presence directly by directly typing or copying and pasting the URL of such a presence or through search engines.
 4. Likewise, a similar process by which businesses can create a presence for themselves and create virtual offices or restaurants for themselves by combining architectural elements and features typical of the kind of business one is creating a presence for. They can link this with social media presence that they may or not already have or create such a presence independent of social media via the web portal they will have registered at.
 5. The process by which the above constructed passive presence for both individuals is as well as businesses is rendered active by adding the following features:
 6. The process by which piped music can be played to landing users automatically by uploading and saving of audio files or by pasting links thereby creating playlists that play on an endless loop or play music or messages on an endless loop basis by uploading audio or video files or by pasting audio or video links for the purpose. The audio is automatically extracted from the video links pasted or files uploaded for the purpose.
 7. The process by which when piped music or videos are playing, audio output animated icon of musical notes can be seen flying out of the graphic representation of individuals homes or businesses. An auto-play switch is provided to allow visitors to enable or disable automatic audio play.
 8. The process by which a graphical television screen will be appended to the virtual home or business created. The individual or business creating the graphical presence will upload video or videos they want landing users to see automatically upon landing. They will be able to select one video or multiple videos that can play sequentially on an endless loop to landing visitors.
 9. The process by which a scrolling display will be appended to the graphical home or office or restaurants where announcements can be typed and entered by individuals or businesses or restaurants so that landing visitors can see these announcements.
 10. The process by which landing visitors can initiate live interaction with owners of the virtual homes or offices or restaurants via a chat interface or via video teleconferencing.
 11. The process by which landing individuals can set up appointments with owners of virtual offices or restaurants using an active calendar or reschedule appointments.
 12. The process by which landing users can avail of the commercial offerings of the business and make selection—example being the ability to see the menu and prices of items in a restaurant and to be able to select items as well as quantity and designate whether you wish to collect the items ordered or have them delivered. Similar choices are provided for other businesses like physicians' offices.
 13. The process by users can make payments for the items ordered either before the item is delivered or after as is appropriate for the business. The process by which payment gateways are made available to the landing users and for payments to be automatically routed to the accounts of businesses with a deduction credited to the service provider portal operator.
 14. The process by which landing users type comments about their experience and rate the service or items ordered providing useful information to others who might be interested in availing the offerings
 15. The process by which users and businesses can automatically extract links of their social own media postings and save it within their virtual presence database and provide extensive ways to index them and search through them by the nature of the post whether it is a link to audio, video or picture or text or by date or based on keywords.
 16. The process by which users and businesses can designate which of the information extracted can be seen by whom.
 17. The process by which individuals can announce requirements. For example, an individual can announce that they are looking for music lessons or tennis lessons. A restaurant can announce that they are looking for a chef who specializes in Chinese cuisine.
 18. The process by which both businesses as well as individuals will be equipped with tools of announcement like ‘What I Am Looking For’ and ‘What I Am Offering’ boxes in the case of individuals in which the privacy setting for each entry can be set so that the audience for the announcement can be restricted very precisely. Individuals can announce all their interests and their proficiency so landing visitors can interact with them based on their interests—like karaoke singing or tennis or hiking. A restaurant can announce that they are looking to hire a chef who specializes in Chinese food.
 19. The process by which we capture the addresses of businesses as well authenticate their license to operate by verifying with the city or state database.
 20. The process by which we capture the addresses of individuals and their payment mechanisms credit card, debit card or direct link to a bank account or PayPal. (The addresses are kept confidential).
 21. The process by which we create a virtual neighborhood with all the captured information—a neighborhood you can zoom in or zoom out from as in a mapping software.
 22. The process by which businesses can transmit information about their special offerings to all individuals in a neighborhood upon payment made to the service operator based on number of individuals who will get messages of their offerings.
 23. The process by which a travelling person can check out all the businesses as well as individuals in the area. For example, if he is an Indian travelling in USA and is missing home made food, he would be able to check out Indians families in the vicinity who he could have a meal with and interact with them—thereby providing a way to form friendships as well or get advice on local restaurants or places to visit.
 24. The process by which the virtual presence so created to be linked in some way to the social media profile page of the individual or business so that the friends of the individual or the business can be made aware of the presence created so that they may be induced to create presence for themselves as well or to increase the traffic of a business that might culminate in increased commercial transaction with the business.
 25. The process by which businesses can upload domain specific information about the business, like Menu in the case of a restaurant or information on the specialty in the case of a Physician's office.
 26. The process by which individuals upload and make available resume or Portfolio information to precisely defined audience.
 27. The process by which ability is provided for search, advanced search and to set up virtual communities of people and businesses based on selected criteria and to be able to browse through these virtual communities this created.
 28. The process by which interactions and commercial transactions with businesses can be interfaced with the ERP systems that these businesses might deploy. 